“Making seemingly insignificant changes to how we do things on a daily basis can cause county, country and worldwide ripples if done as a group,” Andersen said.

That’s why earlier in the year he founded Community Ripple.

“My neighbor and I had both unknowingly hired tree companies to do some work on our properties one day apart from each other,” Andersen wrote in an email. “I was sitting there watching from my deck this scene play out and realized how it was costing us more money as well as [creating] unnecessary traffic, pollution and potential road fatalities simply because we didn’t know each other’s plans.”

Joining Community Ripple is free. Not too long ago, Andersen celebrated the 1,000th member. He’s looking forward to adding a zero to that number because the more people who join, the more impact it will have.Community Ripple’s greatest need is more members.

“Watching potential clients’ mouths drop when I walk them through the simplicity of it all is really exciting,” Andersen said. “You can join in 10 seconds by going to communityripple.com and start saving and connecting today.”

It’s all about making the best use of time and resources within the community.

“What Community Ripple does is educate neighbors on the value of knowing each other and how they can coordinate their needs to reduce cost, traffic and waste through our portal,” Andersen said. “Recommended business owners love it as well because now they’re able to provide better service to more customers with less time and cost.”

Community Ripple isn’t a business out to make money. In fact, the opposite is true.

“One of the overarching missions is to make it less expensive in both time and money to hire a professional than to do it yourself,” he said. “In my idealist mindset, I hope people will use the extra time and money to go out and do good in the world. Businesses pay a small amount to be in the system, but that cost is quickly offset because their operating expenses decrease and they can serve more customers.”

Andersen graduated from Old Dominion University with a degree in human services. His wife, Josephine Andersen, is from England. Together they have three children and one on the way.

In these past months Andersen faced several challenges setting up Community Ripple. For example, the technology of implementing the system was harder to program then he expected. But he sees each test as a learning experience.

Right now Andersen’s main focus is serving Fluvanna. “We’re learning a lot along the way,” he said. “I have a hope that [Community Ripple] will change the way we communicate across the country and that in 10 years’ time we can build a plaque that says, ‘where Community Ripple was born.’”